Modernity and Its Discontents

Term:
Fall 2010

Subject Code:
GLIB

Course Number:
6315

An introduction to liberal studies at the New School for Social Research,
this seminar brings new students and faculty together to explore a variety
of themes and texts that epitomize some of the critical concerns of our age.
Among the topics discussed are freedom and the problem of progress; human
rights; individualism; the end of slavery and the implications of European
world domination; new views of human nature; the idea of the avant-garde;
and the moral implications of modern war and totalitarianism. Among the
authors read are Rousseau, Kant, Goethe, James Madison, Robespierre,
Condorcet, Hegel, Marx, Emerson, Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky, Joseph Conrad,
Darwin, Freud, Ernst J�nger, Georg Luk�cs, Andr� Malraux, Jean Am�ry,
Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, and Michel Foucault.